Sunday, October 24, 2010

How I got into Japanese Fashion & Why I Love It!


 

My love affair with japanese fashion, brands and designers began with a love of Anime a few years ago. I was introduced to animes like Ghost in the Shell and Blood the vampire through an ex boyfriend. The storylines and the quality of the animations astounded me. The complex characters with their awesome styles and the totally mind blowing original plots had me hooked. From this stemmed my fascination with all things Japanese. From there I discovered Japanese film. Death note is still my favourite ever film and also how i learnt about Gothic Lolita thanks to the super cute character Misa Amana 'Misa Misa'.

Before long i was buying japanese magazines and admiring the fashions and scouring Ebay for Japanese clothing. I had a phase of being primarily into Gyaru which loosely translates as gal. Gal has many different styles to it. I started off loving hime gyaru style which translates as princess gal which means dressing in very girly clothing. Pearls, pink, lace, bows etc. Then I moved onto Oneegal which means older sister gal which is aimed at women in their twenties especially. But I found gal too restrictive and now I don't limit myself to one particular Japanese fashion trend as I love aspects from a lot of them.

 I also have a fondness for Japanese brands like Emoda, Gilfy and Sly and Japanese influenced brand Harajuku Lovers (from Gwen Stefani) but only their shoes. I'm also into designers like Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Undercover and I have a passion for Hanae Mori vintage kimonos. I adore Japanese fashion because its innovative, varied and individual. When looking at streetsnaps of Tokyo I'm always amazed by the variety of styles and the uniqueness of the fashions.

 The Japanese know how to really go for it and they don't all look like carbon copies of each other which I love. Their individualism is what draws me to Japanese fashion. Japanese designers are constantly pushing fashion boundaries and I'm in awe of them. If only my bank balance was big enough to afford them but instead I use their ranges as inspiration. I don't think my obsession with Japanese fashion will ever die and I hope through my blog that I'll help more people fall in love with Japanese fashion like I have.

9 comments:

  1. Perhaps I'm falling in the same footsteps. My anime craze started with card captor sakura, then it slowly evolved to J-drama, then it was wanting to go to Japan, then it was obsession with the Japanese style (mainly gyaru) but sadly I don't own any.

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  2. i think alot of westerners get obsessed with Japan through anime :) anime is awesome tho xx

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  3. I definitely find inspiration in Japanese designs. Great blog. Now following ;)
    -Mitch from http://www.lifeistooshorttodowithout.com/

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  4. I love anime also love ghost in the shell, Ninja Scroll and the street fighter anime!

    My friend is really into Japanese fashion but he finds it really hard to get hold of in the UK. He likes the sort anime look with the crazy spikey hair. Do you know of any good sites he should check out? I'd be interested to check some too mainly for inspiration purposes.

    www.arashmazinani.com

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  5. rakuten is really good as its a bit like a japanese shopping centre online with loads of different shops and alot of them ship to the uk and you can order from most japanese sites using a shipping company like treasure japan xx

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  6. Before I really got into the 50's and 60's fashions, I used to read manga obsessively (Hellsing, Trigun, FLCL, Battle Royale, Sailor Moon, Ah! My Goddess, were some of my favourites) and it did, to some degree, influence my dress sense at the time. I remember one other thing that really sparked my interest in it was the FRUiTS books, I used to love seeing all the crazy fashions - not something we really see a lot of in Australia.

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  7. Thanks for the info I'm going to go and have look and see if I can get some cool items!

    www.arashmazinani.com

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  8. You should take a look at Koshka http://www.shopkoshka.com

    They have some interesting japanese designers I haven't seen ANYWHERE else. Really cute stuff, and they appear to ship world-wide.

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  9. Oooo thanks for that I'll check it out :)

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i love comments i check out all your blogs :)